National Clean Energy fund reaches Rs 17,000 cr mark, but not much allocated to renewable energy sector: experts

Fund size increased after govt increased the coal cess to Rs 200 per tonne

While the National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF) has crossed Rs 17,000 crore, not much has been allocated to the Renewable Energy sector, says industry expert.

In his address at Confederation of Indian Industry (CII's) Green Power 2015, Ramesh Kymal, chairman, Renewable Energy Council - CII - Godrej GBC and Chairman and Managing Director, Gamesa India said that after raising the coal cess to Rs 200 per tonne NCEF has crossed Rs 17,000 crore.

"But not much has been allocated to the RE sector from this fund. Immediate steps should be taken to ensure the money from this fund flows into the renewable energy project," said Kymal.

Kymal said that in the past ten years installation of renewable energy has grown at an impressive annual rate of 25 percent and the grid interactive installed capacity from renewable energy was more than 35,777 Mw, representing 13 per cent of the total installed power generation capacity in India.

Kymal said the government could take some important steps to unleash the full potential of the renewable energy sector. They include stricter enforcement of RPO across all states, either through amendment of Electricity Act or Indian Penal Code with penalty for non-compliance, power evacuation and grid integration allowing wind power generators in Tamil Nadu to feed power into the grid especially during the peak wind season, simplification of land acquisition and conversion norms by providing deemed non-agricultural permission for land for renewable energy projects as in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

He also urged the government to look at extension of accelerated depreciation to all renewable energy systems, single window system for statutory and environmental clearances and deemed industry status and deemed open access permission for renewable energy projects in all states.

At present, India is the fifth largest wind energy producer in the World. The National Wind Energy Mission aims to add 60 GW Wind Energy Capacity by 2022 and State specific wind energy schemes aims to achieve over 4000 MW in various states.

Draft offshore Wind Energy Policy has been announced aims to promote deployment of offshore wind farms upto 12 nautical miles from coast.

He said Tamil Nadu was the number one state in renewable energy capacity in India. It was also the number one in installed wind power capacity in the country and number ten in global installed capacity of wind power.